This site preserves and documents the art works on canvas, paper and other materials, of the so-called "China Trade" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that record a period of brisk maritime commerce and warfare, and unprecedented trade between China, Europe, and the United States.

As Carl L. Crossman stated in his authoritative text,The Decorative Arts of the China Trade (1991), "the sheer quality and the number of paintings which exist without an attributable artist reveal how little is actually known about the Cantonese export painters."With the help of generous grants and other gifts, ADI hosts, houses and maintains this archive in cooperation with museums and other collectors of these artistically and culturally significant works.

Featured Galleries:

Forts and Battleships of Nineteenth Century China in China Trade Oil Paintings

Merchant Men and Naval Warriers of Nineteenth Century China Seas in China Trade Oil Paintings

Scenes of Domestic life reflecting European and Chinese Influences in Nineteenth Century China Trade Paintings

Fishing Villages: A Way of life along the Riverbanks reflected in China Trade Paintings

Forts and Battleships of Nineteenth Century China in China Trade Oil Paintings

Unknown artistA Stone Bridgec. 1820Oil on canvas, 43X60 cm

Stone arch bridges were built in China as early as 282 A.D., and some scholars believe this engineering feat was achieved there as early as 250 B.C.

Yet, as China emerged from the 1700s, and an unknown artist rendered this oil painting of a three-arch stone bridge in about 1820, change was all around.

The deceptively pastoral scene shows small fishing or cargo boats along a placid riverbank, but the scene illustrates the growing industry supporting brisk trade along China's rivers and maritime ports: Most remarkably, the painting is rendered in oil in a European style, while, at just that time in France, painters in the Barbizon forest of Fontainebleau, outside Paris, began painting similar landscape scenes.

But China with its ancient traditions of ink on paper and silk, had no such tradition of European realism rendered in oil on canvas or wood. How did this come to pass?This is the story of the China Trade paintings.

Fort of Haizhu

Forts and Battleships of 19th Century China in China Trade Oil Paintings

Haizhu ("sea pearl") is a district in Guangzhou (Canton, the capital of Guangdong province), south of the Zhujiang River and just north of the Pearl River trading routes to the South China Sea. Two Chinese characters “Hai Zhu” are painted on the fort. The oval fort was also known as the Dutch Folly Fort, because it was built by Dutchman on a sandbar in the Pearl River.While sea trade between China and Europe in goods such as porcelain, silk and tea, began on a modern scale in the mid-1500s, forts such as this one sprung up in important trading posts as conflict broke out between the British and Chinese in 1839 during the Qing Dynasty, and continued through the 1840s and 1850s. China had restricted trade by foreign merchants to 13 hongs or headquarters along the Pearl River, outside the city walls of Canton. The British East India Company had begun to trade opium from India into China in exchange for silver. The Qing Emperor blockaded the opium trade into China, the British retaliated in the name of free trade with their superior naval fleet, and the "Opium Wars" had begun.

The painting's provenance shows it to have been purchased in China in the year 1848 by W.M. Roche, at that time in the English service on board of a Man-of-War 74-gun ship commanded by Lord John Churchill.

Dahuangjiao Fort was built on a small island in the Macao Passage, to protect the Pearl River and Canton.

The painting below of Dahuangjiao Island is attributed to Spoilum (Guan Zuolin), the first Cantonese painter known to have painted in oil, who established himself painting British, American and Chinese merchants and ship captains in the late 1700s. Spoilum is believed to have been the grandfather of renowned China Trade oil painter Lam Qua (Guan Qiaochang, or Kwan Kiu Cheong) (1801-1860), and of renowned China Trade watercolorist Tingqua (1809-1870).Unknown artist, Da Huang Jiao Fort. c. 1850. Oil on canvas.Attributed to Spoilum, Dahuangjiao Island. c. 1800. Oil on canvas, 45.7X 60cm.

Pazhou Pagoda, also known as Whampoa Pagoda, was a Buddhist commemorative built in 1597 and completed in 1600 on the south bank of the Pearl River at Whampoa Anchorage. The octagonal, nine-story tower served as a navigational touchstone for merchant ships en route to Canton, and thus became a recognizable image for the export trade.

At sea, transversing the rough seas port to port, were the battleships and merchant marine, faithfully rendered by China Trade painters in oil. This was particularly true as the so-called "Opium Wars" broke out in the 1840s and 1850s.

Battleship of Guangzhou

Unknown artistCanton Battleshipc. 1860Oil on canvas, 46X60cm.

Clearly visible flying astern is the Qing Dynasty flag, a blue dragon on a yellow background with a red pearl, as well as other banded banners showing administrative and military divisions of the fleet.

Flag of the Qing Dynasty

Lai FongBritish ship in Humenc.1870Oil on canvas, 45X60cm.

Lai Fong of Calcutta (Chinese) was a a China Trade painter in oil, active in the late 1800s and early 1900s, who worked and lived in Calcutta, India. He was particularly adept at ship portraits in full sail of the British merchant marine and battleships that manned the waters and trading routes off of Hong Kong and in the Indian Ocean.

Lai Fong was awarded a number of commissions from British sea captains, including those engaged in the Indian jute trade and ships that transported Asian laborers. He painted in oil in a realistic Western manner, and often signed his paintings.

Battleship in Humen, 1775

Unknown artistBattleship in Humenc. 1810Oil on canvas, 23X30cm.

Battleships patrolled the busy seaside port of Humen.

Humen was a town east of the Pearl River delta, with a main trading port for foreign vessels. It was in Humen that the Emperor's men blockaded and destroyed large quantities of seized opium in 1839, at the start of the First Opium War. The waters off Humen Port were the site of major battles in the Opium Wars.

It is possible, based on their stylistic similarities, names, and active dates, that You Chang may be a brother of Lam Qua (Guan Qiaochang) and Ting Qua (Guan Lianchang),

Unknown artistPair of Canton Shipsc. 1830 Oil on canvas, 23X30cm.

While one appears to be a battleship with the Pearl River ports visible in the near distance, the second could be a cargo ship on inland waters.

Attributed to Lam Quac. 1840Oil on wood panel, 13.3X10cm.

Lam Qua (Lamqua, Guan Qiaochang, or Kwan Kiu Cheong) (1801-1860) is believed to have been the grandson of Spoilum (Guan Zuolin), the first Cantonese painter known to have painted in oil, who established himself painting neoclassical, almost colonial portraits of British, American, and Chinese merchants and ship captains in the late 1700s.

Lam Qua became known as an outstanding portraitist and landscapist, one of the finest and most well known of the China Trade painters. He was exposed to the western style, not only through his grandfather Spoilum, but also through the presence of George Chinnery (b. London, 1774 - d. Canton 1852). Chinnery was an established painter of the British Royal Academy, who moved to India in 1802 and worked in Madras and Calcutta, painting society portraits of successful merchants and their wives, before moving to Macao and Canton in 1825.

Chinnery had studied in London under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was thus a direct link in nineteenth-century Guangdong province to the English grand style of oil painting. Lam Qua was a houseboy in the Macao residence where Chinnery first arrived and set up studio, and cleaned Chinnery's brushes as a young apprentice-assistant or pupil.

Lam Qua taught his younger brother, Tingqua (1809-1870), who became a renowned watercolorist and one of the most successful of the China Trade artists.

Many painted wood miniatures were created for the Western market.

Unknown artistFour Miniatures on Woodc. 1840Oil on wood, 7.8X6.2cm.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the seas around China and Hong Kong were busy centers of commerce and warfare. Sailors found time for dragonboat racing on the Pearl River.

Chinese oil painters took these scenes as their subject matter for the export market, while the Impressionists in Paris, painting similar scenes in these same years, began to be influenced no less by the paintings, prints, silks and other exotica coming into their markets from these distant lands.

It would be the more traditional works of China and Japan, however, with their flattened perspectives and vast spaces, that would most influence the Post-Impressionists as their work moved toward the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Attributed to Lam QuaDragonboat Racing on Pearl RiverOil on wood, 19.5X15cm.There are 51 oarsmen on the boat. A similar watercolor by Ting Qua (Lam Qua’s younger brother), showing about 30 sailors, is in the permanent collection of the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Merchant Men and Naval Warriers of Nineteenth Century China Seas in China Trade Oil Paintings

Qi Ying (or Quiying) (1790-1858) was a member of the Qing Dynasty, and the Chinese official who negotiated the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 that ended the First Opium War. The treaty granted the island of Hong Kong to the British, and opened ports to British trade. He signed similar treaties with the United States, France and other nations.

The bird crest on his jacket, and the peacock feathers, indicate that the gentleman is a civilian officer of high rank.

Genre paintings and garden scenes were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These paintings are striking in their combination of Chinese imagery, the lanterns and banners, screens and woodwork, together with Western realism and Renaissance linear perspective.

This pair is by Youqua, a highly accomplished and successful painter in oils and watercolors, active from 1840 to 1870 in both Canton and Hong Kong. These show his use of nearly square canvases, characteristic of his earlier work.

Here again, Chinese family members and attendants in traditional costume and attire are set amid a lush classical landscape in the Western European style. In both paintings, geometric gates including a center medallion create a sense of almost surrealistic symbolism.

This diptych by an unknown artist, of a pair of fishing homes on the banks of the Pearl River, illustrates as few China Trade works do the blending of ancient Chinese traditions with classical Western painting traditions taking place.

On the one hand, the scenes are painted in oil on canvas, in a lush, painterly European realism with Renaissance perspective. On the other, their composition unmistakably echoes that of classical ancient Chinese paintings and hanging scrolls on silk, with their vast sky, atmospheric perspective, stepped depth progression and diagonally receding planes.

Unknown artistA Stone Bridgec. 1820Oil on canvas, 43X60 cm

An ancient stone arch bridge, a simple village of cargo and fishing boats… Yet change was all around as China emerged from the 1700s when this scene was painted in oil in the Western manner.